Happy Birthday #AllenGinsberg. I will go to a Supermarket in California (L.A., though, not Berkeley) and also say/read Kaddish. Thank you for these two (and more) magnificent poems.
April is #NationalPoetryMonth. I love many poems but "Kaddish" by #AllenGinsberg is one of my very favorites. So many incredible lines, like this one: "There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you’ve gone, it’s good."
April is #NationalPoetryMonth. I love many poems but "Kaddish" by #AllenGinsberg is one of my very favorites. So many incredible lines, like this one: "There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you’ve gone, it’s good."
One of my projects these days has been to digitize my old Super 8 films from long ago and far away. Here's one I shot in California of Allen Ginsburg and his partner Peter Orlovsky. I had forgotten that Lawrence Ferlinghetti was even there that day until I saw this.
Unfortunately, there is no sound.
Hopefully this link takes you right there.
Today in Labor History October 3, 1957: The California State Superior Court ruled that the book Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg, was not obscene. The poem was based, in part, on a horrifying peyote hallucination he had of the glitzy Sir Frances Drake hotel, in San Francisco, morphing into a child-eating demon. The poem’s references to drug use and to homosexuality are what provoked the obscenity trial. City Lights bookstore own and publisher of Howl, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and bookstore manager, Shig Murao, were arrested on obscenity charges for selling the book.
My friend just sent me a scan of the prayer book his temple is using for Holy Week, "Machzor for the Days of Awe," and it's nice to see a passage by my old teacher, poet #AllenGinsberg. The wording echoes both Walt Whitman and a line of Kerouac's, "Flowers bend crookedly toward the straight death."
Another great shot of @WardQNormal and me from the other day with Jesse Goodman and Peter Hale, who I met through #AllenGinsberg's office. They were here for the final #deadandcompany run with Antonio Pagano, who took the photo. Thanks guys! #Deadheads
Happy #StarWarsDay! My perennial anecdote: I saw Star Wars with the poet #AllenGinsberg when it opened in Boulder in 1977. When the crawl went up the screen ("A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..."), Allen sighed, "Thank God - I don't have to worry about it!" #poetry#movies